"Erm... Suggestions?"
"We keep observing to determine how many guards there are, but from my guess, there's only about two... If we can take them out, we can assess the situation better from down there..."
Right. We cautiously made our way back to the top of the stairs and looked down onto the floor below, where two guards were currently visible, making their way around the column of portals. We watched for a minute or two, and determined that there was indeed only two guards. Backing off again, we planned out the next step.
"Definitely two. That's easily dealt with. When the first comes around the front and heads off to the left, I'll follow him, whilst one of you two go down the central partition, and head to the right, to follow the other. Make sure they're not in each others line of sight when you do tranquillise them though."
It seemed either THEROS was eager to prove something, or he felt like some action, as he opted for following the second guard. UOPETA told me to remain here in case something happened and someone was needed to inform the others. With the plan laid out, THEROS and UOPETA went down the stairs; UOPETA to the left, following closely behind the guard on the left, and THEROS going down the centre. They both disappeared from view, and a few moments later, two sharp whistles... Had they been successful? UOPETA leaned around the corner and beckoned me down. It would seem so...
It was incredibly eerie; here we were, walking around a huge open room, with lots and lots of portals active around us. The noise was quite loud, and the amount of purple light being thrown around nearly overwhelmed that of the torches placed at specific intervals along the walls. What did we do now? Using the glowing stone would take forever to destroy all of these portals, especially when you took into account of the length of time for a portal to be destroyed, and the recharge time. An accurate estimate could be given if we knew how many portals there were...
All three of us began to walk around the huge room, staring at the collection of portals in what could be described as awe! It was beautiful and deadly all at the same time... Any number of these could draw creatures in from the Nether, into our dimension. I had to think myself lucky that there wasn't an Affinitas cage nearby, or that could make matters considerably worse! We all made our way around the entire room and met in the middle. I had counted forty four, but I may have missed a few or added some due to the massive overload of information to my brain!
"How many did you count? I counted forty four... I think..."
"Same..."
We were in agreement then. Forth four active standard portals all within an enclosed area, and we didn't even know about it. How many more places have they got like this? They could have hundreds of places like this, all with enough portals to activate a secondary one! One hundred of these places, and they could drastically gain the advantage, and get many steps closer to activating the master portal! We hadn't thought the standard portals were initially a threat, but now... Well, let's just say we couldn't let them get to the stage of secondary portal replication!
"What options do we have...?"
"Well, only two that I can see... The first is to destroy each and every portal here now! There are forty four portals around, and it takes about four minutes to destroy one portal and allow for recharge... That would mean we're looking at a time frame of... Nearly... Three hours..."
"Three hours!?!? That would take ages! I don't think the sedatives last for that long!"
"Well we could always re-sedate them if they begin to wake up..."
"That's not an option... OROTHO said that the sedative had to be quite powerful to knock out Creepers. Multiple immediate doses of the tranquiliser would be enough to kill someone..."
"That leaves us with the only other option then..."
"Which is?"
"We return to base, and wait for the others to carve more of the stone up. If we each have each have a stone... We could easily get every portal destroyed in... Just under an hour... Split evenly..."
Was that even an option...? I knew that these weren't exactly the scenarios we had expected, but I couldn't believe that was an option... Well, actually I could, considering the other wasn't really feasible. I thought about it, trying to determine the outcome of this, but in the end I agreed. I had to, we didn't really have any other choice, short of burying the portals with water! But that wouldn't necessarily knock them offline... I nodded, as did THEROS...
"We're agreed then. We'll head back to base and inform the others of our findings. Syeonyx, take a few more shots and try to show what scale we're talking about here. Once they see what we're up against, I think they'll see it from our point of view. They might even be able to offer additional options..."
UOPETA and THEROS began to make their way back to the entrance, whilst I walked around, taking images of the entire room. In the end, I just took a few from the top of the stairs; it gave a total view of the entire room. We left the room, going back up the stairs. UOPETA flicked the switch closest to us, and a few seconds later the one ahead of us flicked up. It was reset, so hopefully no-one would know any better. Just us. Let's just hope this was worth it...
Syeonyx signing off
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